Robotics

Detection of methanol using a soft photonic crystal robot

Robots are currently employed in industrial sites and fields, including disaster rescue, medicine, security, and national defense. Conventional metal-based robots exert strong operating power due to rigid body construction ...

Energy & Green Tech

Scientists unveil least costly carbon capture system to date

The need for technology that can capture, remove and repurpose carbon dioxide grows stronger with every CO2 molecule that reaches Earth's atmosphere. To meet that need, scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest ...

Energy & Green Tech

Powering ships with hydrogen from methanol

Shipping is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, and this is leading shipbuilders and operators on a search for environmentally friendly alternative propulsion systems. Researchers at Fraunhofer have joined ...

Energy & Green Tech

Obtaining hydrogen from methanol: Optimized reformers

Methanol reformers convert easy-to-transport methanol into hydrogen. But conventional reformers still come with a number of drawbacks—catalyst attrition, to name but one example. An innovative methanol reformer for mobile ...

Energy & Green Tech

Floating power plants

Paper, tin cans, glass—the world recycles as much as possible. So why not declare the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) a recycling product as well? Liquid fuels based on carbon will continue to play an important role ...

Energy & Green Tech

Making fuel out of thick air

Scientists hoping to develop new energy resources have long pursued the goal of directly converting methane, a simple and abundant chemical found in natural gas, into a usable fuel such as methanol. Until now, scientists ...

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Methanol

Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol, wood alcohol, wood naphtha or wood spirits, is a chemical with the formula CH3OH (often abbreviated MeOH). It is the simplest alcohol, and is a light, volatile, colorless, flammable liquid with a distinctive odor very similar to, but slightly sweeter than, ethanol (drinking alcohol). At room temperature, it is a polar liquid, and is used as an antifreeze, solvent, fuel, and as a denaturant for ethanol. It is also used for producing biodiesel via transesterification reaction.

Methanol is produced naturally in the anaerobic metabolism of many varieties of bacteria, and is ubiquitous in the environment. As a result, there is a small fraction of methanol vapor in the atmosphere. Over the course of several days, atmospheric methanol is oxidized with the help of sunlight to carbon dioxide and water.

Methanol burns in air, forming carbon dioxide and water:

Because of its toxic properties, methanol is frequently used as a denaturant additive for ethanol manufactured for industrial uses — this addition of methanol exempts industrial ethanol from liquor excise taxation. Methanol is often called wood alcohol because it was once produced chiefly as a byproduct of the destructive distillation of wood.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA